Life of the Shifters
by SweetappyOC16
Summary: Pax, JC and Tia are teen shapeshifters in Springhead, Colorado trying to figure out the secrets of their society.
1. The Beginning

Chapter 1

**A/N:** My first story ever feel free to comment and review. Any feedback or suggestions are appreciated!

On the day before the first day of school some people would say it's ok to be nervous. The only problem is I'm not nervous about the start of school after two months of relaxation. I'm worried about what happened over summer vacation. Tomorrow starts my junior year at Springhead High, the same school I've been in since I was a freshman.

I only had two friends freshman year. I have those same friends beside me this year. Most of the kids at Springhead High call us "The Pack" because we stick together all the time. We sit next to each other during class, lunch, and free period. We all share a secret that no one at our school would believe. I think that secret binds us but I also think something clicked when we first met.

My friends Tia, JC and I live in sleepy, rural Springhead, Colorado; a town nestled in the foothills of the great Rocky Mountains. There are too many farms to count in Springhead, it's real cowboy country. All of them stretch over hundreds of acres. The farmers raise vegetables, cattle, horses, and dogs. Tia is my neighbor and lives right next door to my father's 200 acre ranch. My dad and I live alone together on that ranch breeding Appaloosa horses. I'm an only child and my mom just got up and left one day when I was too young to remember her face. It's ok though because dad keeps saying, "it was bound to happen eventually so better that it was before you really knew who she was."

As I mentioned before Tia lives next door to me. She lives with her Native American born mother on a small 10 acre property to breed ranch dogs like Collies and Australian Shepherds to help all of the farmers. JC lives farther away from me and Tia. Luckily its only five miles so we are still very close. JC doesn't own any animals; his sister, Stacy, is allergic to fur and dust. Stacy was adopted when she and JC were around one so people always think they're twins; I guess JC's parents didn't want him to be alone growing up. Stacy hates any animal, especially Tia and I.

As I sit here thinking about Springhead it really is the perfect place for my kind. The shape shifters.

**A/N:** Chapter 2 will follow next week!


	2. Sweet Sixteen

**A/N:** Here it is! Hope you enjoy and feel free to review!

Chapter 2

JC, Tia and I are shape shifters and so are our parents. We are the only ones in Springhead although there's a network across the country and in every state. We prefer rural areas but some are ok with living in the cities. There are different groups of shape shifters but they don't really matter once you turn sixteen which is what happened to me over the summer. When a shape shifter turns sixteen they can start to expand their shape to any animal they can touch including another shifter's original animal.

It's not that I didn't want my sixteenth birthday to happen I was just worried that what I could do after it might change who I was. There was a huge party for my birthday and every shifter in Colorado was there, including JC and Tia, which doesn't amount to more than two hundred people all of which I know very well. All of the Sweet Sixteen parties for shifters are the same and I'd been to both JC and Tia's, who are now seventeen. The party had to take place in a giant house in the middle of the mountains where no humans would see us because, like at every party, on the minute that the birthday person was born, in this case me, everyone changed to their original animal. At that moment in a mansion in the Rocky Mountains there were wolves, horses, leopards, and eagles, the four original shape shifter forms. Then the party really got started and everyone danced and ate chocolate cake and it started to feel like a normal Sweet Sixteen party, except for the part where there were animals running around everywhere. At about two in the morning everyone went back to their own houses.

My family's original form is a horse which is why my dad and I raise horses. Your original form is the easiest to change into and the one I feel the best in. Tia and her mom are wolves which is pretty cool and why they raise dogs. I use that to tease Tia that she better watch out for the full moon. JC and his parents are eagles which is definitely the best one because they can fly. Stacy is human and even though she knows all about shape shifters she would never tell anyone about them because she loves her parents. She doesn't like JC very much even though they're adopted brother and sister and Tia and I have concluded that this is because she is jealous of what we are and that she can never be a shape shifter.


	3. Chapter 3

1

Chapter 3

On the first day of my junior year of high school I get up at five in the morning to hay and water the horses. As I enter the kitchen of my red wooden house I see my dad drinking his coffee which he never does until at least eight a.m.

"What's going on here?" I ask as I sit across the table. "Isn't today a big day for my girl?" My dad says with a twang that's barely noticeable. "Umm, it's the first day of school, dad, not too special." "Well then if it isn't too special I'll just have to eat all of the eggs and bacon myself."He teases as he gets up to get our breakfast off the counter.

After I dress for school in jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt I look myself over in the mirror. What I see is an athletic-looking teenage girl with dirty blonde hair that goes down to the middle of her back, freckles covering her nose and cheekbones, and wild-looking eyes the color of sapphires.

"This is me. I am Pax Adair."I whispered to myself as I left for Tia's house next door.


End file.
